JTS Torah Commentary

Is Love Enough?

Aug 16, 2024 By Judith Hauptman | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

This context helps explain why both Shema paragraphs need to be included in our morning and evening prayers. The first paragraph opens with a confession of faith in the one God, and demands loving this one God with all our heart, soul, and might. It goes on to say that we are to keep the words God issued this day in our hearts and on our lips at all times, and we should teach them to our children. We are even told to “wear” these commandments on our arms and foreheads and to display them in public places. In all, the first paragraph of the Shema is very upbeat, with its focus on love of God and mitzvot.

The Words Upon Our Hearts

Jul 28, 2023 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

In this week’s parashah we encounter anew perhaps the most well-known words in our tradition, the first paragraph of the Shema. In these verses, we are commanded to place before us at all times words of Torah. They are to be in our hearts, in our mouths, on our heads and hands, and at the entrances to our homes.

Indeed, according to the rabbinic tradition, the commandment in verse 6 to place these words on our hearts is intended to teach us how to fulfill the foundational commandment to “love God…”

Never Too Late to Get Close

Aug 12, 2022 By Benjy Forester | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

From a young age, I knew I was supposed to like Neil Young. The stereo was turned up whenever his signature falsetto voice came on the radio, and before my bar mitzvah I was taken to see the 2006 documentary concert/film Neil Young: Heart of Gold. My initiation was complete with my first Neil concert […]

The Commandments We Need

Jul 23, 2021 By Rachel Rosenthal | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

The act of retelling is, by virtue of necessity, an act of interpretation. Certain details sharpen and others fade as we place a past experience in the context of our needs and thoughts in the present moment. As Yosef Chayim Yerushalmi famously argued in his seminal book Zachor, there’s a difference between history and memory—both are deeply important, but they play different roles in our lives.

The Wholeness of a Broken Tablet

Jul 31, 2020 By Naomi Kalish | Commentary | Va'et-hannan | Tishah Be'av

Parashat Va’et-hannan (Deut. 3–7) is always read on Shabbat Nahamu—the “Shabbat of Comfort”—which falls immediately after Tishah Be’av, the day when we commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples. It receives its name from the opening line of the Haftarah: “Comfort, comfort, my people” (Isaiah 40:1).

A Leader’s Limits

Aug 16, 2019 By Hillel Gruenberg | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

The very title of this week’s parashah, Va’et-hannan (“and I pleaded”), presents the larger-than-life figure of Moses in a humbling place. Before sharing with the people fundamental elements of the faith that they have taken on and the civilization that they aspire to become, Moses confessed to them that his exclusion from the destined land of promise was against his will, and in spite of emotional pleas to God (Deut. 3:23–26). The man who chose to forgo the trappings of a life among the royal Egyptian elite to lead an at-times ungrateful band of liberated slaves through the desert would ultimately be barred from tasting the final fruit of his sacrifice.

Second haftarah of consolation

Aug 3, 2018 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

Underlying this second haftarah of comfort is a sense of near-despair: the people lament having been abandoned by God, and God responds to their unspoken fear that God is powerless to save them. As the honest grief of the heart and soul that knows what it has lost, such despair is necessary; without it, comfort and hope are false. But despair is dangerous too; it can lead to helplessness, disengagement, and resignation to injustice. It can also create an inability to embrace a redemptive message: while the people lament being abandoned by God, God is calling to them and being ignored.

Holding Fast

Jul 27, 2018 By Mychal Springer | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

This week we emerge from the destitution of Tisha Be’av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the Temples, and receive the gift of Shabbat Nahamu, the Shabbat of our being comforted. נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי יֹאמַר אֱלֹהֵיכֶם, “Comfort, oh comfort My people, Says your God” (Isaiah 40:1). What is comfort? One way of understanding the essence of comfort is by engaging with Moshe Rabbenu (our teacher, Moses) in this week’s parashah.

First haftarah of consolation (Shabbat Nahamu)

Jul 27, 2018 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

This special haftarah, which begins nahamu nahamu ami—“comfort, oh comfort, My people,” is the first of seven special haftarot of comfort (drawn from Isaiah 40–63). During these seven weeks, the relationship between the people and God—strained almost to breaking on Tishah Be’av—is slowly rebuilt, allowing us to stand before God once again on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

“Like Tefillin Straps, Roads”

Aug 4, 2017 By Yitzhak Lewis | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

Dress me, kosher mother [. . .]
And with Shaharit, lead me to labor.

My land is wrapped in light as a tallit
Houses stand like phylacteries And like tefillin straps, roads ride on that hands have paved. [. . .]

Ve’ahavta: A Pedagogy for Thriving

Aug 4, 2017 By Bill Robinson | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

What teachings of Judaism are helping you thrive in today’s world? How can you better keep these teachings in front of you at all times? And how can we help our children find in Judaism that which helps them thrive?

Experiencing the Light of Torah

Aug 19, 2016 By Nicole Wilson-Spiro | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

This summer I returned to Jewish overnight camp after a 15-year hiatus. After all this time, s’mores, a love of cheering in unison (has the cheering gotten louder or am I older?), and earnest, hard-working counselors (I was one, once) are still to be found at camp. I am happy to report that the food is now much, much better than I remembered, and the supervision and attention to camper care have improved vastly, as well.

The Smell of Canaan

Aug 19, 2016 By Alisa Braun | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

The smell of Canaan he has had for all his life; that he should see the land only before his death is hard to believe. . . . Not because his life was too short does Moses not reach Canaan, but because it was a human life.

—Franz Kafka, in a diary entry from 1921

Did Moses Die for Us?

Jul 31, 2015 By Stephen P. Garfinkel | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

What a magnificent and rich Torah reading we have this week, Parashat Va’et-hannan! It’s as if the Torah wants to compensate the Jewish community for the week gone by, a week during which we commemorated Tishah Be’av, the putative anniversary of so many devastating events that have occurred throughout Jewish history. This week’s “reward” is a reading that incorporates a restatement of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-17) followed almost immediately by the first paragraph of the Shema (6:4-9).

Pluralism From the Bible to Israel

Jul 31, 2015 By Alex Sinclair | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

“Shamor vezakhor bedibur ehad” (“keep” and “remember” in one utterance), we sing in Lekhah Dodi (a phrase originally found in the Talmud, BT Shevuot 20b), because The Ten Commandments were given twice, once telling us to “remember” shabbat, and once, in this week’s parashah, telling us to “keep” it.

The Comfort of Prayer

Aug 8, 2014 By Jan Uhrbach | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

Parashat Va’et-hannan contains some of the most inspiring and sweepingly grand passages in the entire Torah, and some of the best known, including the Ten Commandments and the first paragraph of the Shema.

Humility: God Is Above and Below

Aug 8, 2014 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

Parashat Va’et-hannan, the second Torah reading of the book of Deuteronomy, places much of its emphasis on the loyal observance of mitzvot, God’s commandments.

Separation and Connectedness

Jul 17, 2013 By Leonard A. Sharzer | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

In Parashat Va-ethannan, Moses seems to have finally come to accept that he will not enter the Promised Land with the People, whom he liberated from Egyptian slavery and guided during a 40-year trek through the wilderness. As he concludes his first oration, he recalls his pleading with God to allow him to enter the Land, a plea that was denied because of his response to the demand of the People for water. Now, no longer pleading for a pardon, or even a commutation of the sentence, he exhorts the People to follow God’s commandments and the teachings he, Moses, has transmitted to them.

Humility Toward God, Even in Victory

Jul 17, 2013 By Matthew Berkowitz | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

Parashat Va’et-hannan, the second Torah reading of the book of Deuteronomy, places much of its emphasis on the loyal observance of mitzvot, God’s commandments.

Tears at the Moon

Aug 13, 2011 By Vivian B. Mann <em>z”l</em> | Commentary | Va'et-hannan

Throughout my youth, I sat next to my grandmother in the synagogue. When we recited the Blessing Over the New Moon, in which we beseech God for a spiritually rewarding life that knows no physical impediments, my grandmother would cry. Each month, I remember her tears and they deepen my understanding of the prayer.